Sadly I think weapons are going to be the next big Chinese export boom. Russia has its capacity for exports limited by the Ukraine war. And as this example (plus drones) demonstrates Chinese tech is clearly good enough.
I don't think it's surprising that a plane got downed, and I wouldn't read much into it, apart from the PR.
Also, I think the rafale is a 40 year old design and has been in production since '91, the j-10 is from 10 year later.
I'm not sure this really tells us much about the current state of things.
Might show the value of a J10C and the Chinese EW suite, but also showed the failure of Chinese AD and the success of Indian-Israeli-Russian AD cooperation and the Indian Ballistics Missile Program.
There are absolutely some stressed conversations happening in France about SPECTRA, because the rest of the IAF uses a hybrid Indian-Israeli datalink but not in the Rafale yet.
Also they found an unexploded PL-15 near my ancestral village. There were a decent number of those found all across the JK, HP, PB region.
I read it to see if the evidence shown at the two press conferences by the Indian DGs of Operations and Modi landing on the Adampur Airbase (which was supposed to be heavily damaged) and giving a speech with the S-400 system (which was supposed to be destroyed) behind him was covered in the article.
It isn't.
The only thing covered is claims by a state known for its pathological lying and its all-weather ally. So, more of a press release than journalism.
Hardly a surprise.